Mother Nature as Engineer: 9 Design Tricks Borrowed From Biology

For elegance and efficiency in design, Mother Nature takes gold. Compared with our technology, Nature’s solutions are often less wasteful, longer lived, self-maintaining and typically stronger, faster and lighter.

Engineers looking for new ideas have found inspiration in nature's designs. Biomimicry, or "life imitating,” is a time-honored route to innovation, stretching back at least to the 15th century, when Leonardo DaVinci studied birds to create plans for flying machines.

In celebration of Nature’s clever creativity we’ve collected a sampling of the coolest biomimetic applications and areas of research.

Above:

The Kingfisher and the Shinkansen Train

Engineers building an upgrade to Japan’s Shinkansen, or bullet trains, succeeded in making them travel 200 miles per hour, but their noise exceeded environmental standards. As a train traveled into a narrow tunnel it would create a sonic boom upon exiting.

Part of the problem was a blunt, bullet-shaped nose which pushed air in front of it rather than slicing through. To solve the problem, engineers took inspiration from the bills of kingfishers, which can dive into water with scarcely a splash.

Kingfishers wedge themselves into water with a streamlined beak that gradually increases in diameter from tip to head, letting water flow past. By modeling bullet train noses on kingfisher beaks, West Japan Railway Company engineers created the 500 series, which entered service in 1997. The trains are quieter, 10 percent faster and use 15 percent less electricity.

Strong Like a Tree

Trees and bones are strong and relatively lightweight. To distribute stress uniformly, trees add wood at the heaviest load points. Bones remove material from areas where it isn’t needed to lighten skeletal frameworks. Engineers have incorporated structural design lessons from trees and bones into software design programs for optimizing the weight and performance of materials.

Mercedes’ Bionic concept car was built for lightweight strength, taking inspiration from trees and boxfishes. While the low-emission Bionic car was never mass-produced, Mercedes has used similar design principles in subsequent cars produced for market.

Bendy, Self-Repairing Concrete

A small cut might leave us cursing and reaching for a BandAid, but it’s rarely serious. Our circulatory system, a three-dimensional micro-vascular network, soon sends our skin materials to help repair the damage.

Engineers from University of Michigan created concrete that has a skin-like ability to heal itself when cracked. They used special microfibers, rather than coarse bits of gravel and sand, to strengthen the cement. The fibers allow the concrete to bend and crack in narrow hair-width fractures rather than gaping splits. When cracked, the concrete absorbs moisture from surrounding air, then becomes soft and “grows,” filling in the crack. Meanwhile, calcium ions in the cement also absorb moisture and carbon dioxide, forming calcium carbonate -- the material found in seashells. The regrowth and re-hardening makes the broken concrete strong again.

While this self-healing concrete initially costs three times what traditional concrete does, over a structure's lifetime it can pay for itself with reductions in repair costs.

Images: 1) John DellAngelo/Flickr. 2) Nicole Casal Moore, University of Michigan News Service and College of Engineering.

Fighting Germs Like a Shark

Unlike the skin of whales and manatees, shark skin doesn’t pick up algae or barnacles. This seems to be due to little scales called “dermal denticles.”

Automatic Water Delivery

The Thorny Devil, or Moloch horridus, gathers all its water through channels in its skin. When air cools at night, dew collects on the lizard’s skin and is pulled to its mouth by capillary action.

If passive systems could collect and distribute naturally distilled water, it could help millions of people easily obtain clean, fresh water.

Images: 1) AskNature.org.

Less Painful, Mosquito-Style Needles

Whatever the red, itchy aftermath, a mosquito’s initial injection is often painless. The bug’s serrated proboscis touches the skin’s nerves at fewer points than it would if smooth.

In the quest for a less painful needle, engineers at Kansai University in Osaka, Japan are creating tiny, jagged-edged needle modeled after a mosquito's proboscis. Unlike the flat cylindrical tubes of traditional needles, two serrated shanks form their needle's exterior, while a central shaft slides between.

Images: 1) AskNature.org. 2) Seiji Aoyagi.

All-Natural Air Conditioning

The inside of a termite mound stays at near-constant temperature and humidity, no matter how wet, dry, scorching or freezing it might be outside. To do this, termites open and close a series of heating and cooling vents throughout the day.

When planning the Eastgate Shopping Center and office block in Harare, Zimbabwe, architect Mike Pearce studied the structure of termite mounds. Today, Eastgate uses 10 percent of the energy required by similar conventional buildings. Eastgate’s energy savings also allow its rental rates to be lower.

Images: AskNature.org.

Building a Better Surfboard

Ripples on the leading edge of humpback fins help the whales slice through water with grace and dexterity. Called tubercules, they reduce drag and allow humpbacks to “grip” the water and swim in tight circles, despite their enormous size.

Underwater RFID Tags

Tiny layers in the wing scales of blue morpho butterflies reflect light at multiple angles, leading to the interference patterns we see as iridescence.

Omni-ID, a company that makes radio frequency ID tags, studied this reflection in their quest to create a tag that could be read through a metal mesh and in water. An intricate set of metal layers focuses and manipulates incoming radio waves, allowing the tag to send back a clear signal.

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